Summarised by Centrist
Damien Grant says TOP’s flagship tax-and-income policy falls apart because its revenue assumptions are too high, its costs are too low, and its claimed savings are unrealistic.
TOP proposes a land value tax of 1.75% on urban land and 0.5% on rural land, which it says would raise $24 billion. Grant argues this depends on total taxable land values of about $1.4 trillion, but says the closest Reserve Bank figure he found was $1.6 trillion for total residential property, including buildings. If residential property is roughly half land and half buildings, he says residential land tax would raise “perhaps 12 billion”, not $24 billion.
For TOP’s figure to work, Grant says commercial and rural land would need to be worth two or three times residential land, despite urban land being far more valuable per hectare.
He then attacks the spending side. TOP says paying adults $19,400 would cost $69.6 billion, implying only 3.66 million adults. Grant says Statistics NZ puts the adult population at “about 4.1 million”, meaning the real cost is closer to “eighty billion” before extra payments for children, pensioners and housing support.
The final hole is administrative savings. Grant says TOP budgets $3.8 billion in overhead savings, which he equates to about 30,000 public servants.
According to Grant, TOP’s calculator works only if land tax revenue is inflated, population costs are understated, and savings appear from nowhere. As he puts it, “The numbers do not add up.”
